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Compulsive behavior is behavior which a person does "compulsively", i.e., not because they enjoy it but because they feels they "have to". The two most common forms are:

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Compulsive behavior generally arises out of obsessional thoughts, and is driven by a sense of discomfort, which may be described as unease, anxiety, or guilt.[1]

When guilt feelings are to the fore, it is generally a severe, unyielding, archaic conscience that is in question.[2] Sometimes behavior is obviously following such a conscience, as with the exaggerated repetition of the parental command to 'go and wash' in guilt-driven compulsive washing; sometimes it may represent both obedience to conscience and its defiance in successive actions, as when a stone is removed from a road, and then put back, or when a gas tap is first turned on and then turned off again;[3] sometimes obedience and defiance are combined in one single act.[4]

Judith L. Rapoport proposed that there were three main types of compulsive behaviors - checkers, exacters, and washers.[5] Checkers are obliged over and over again to make sure they have not left the lights on, or doors and windows unlocked; exacters to create symmetry in anything from shoe laces to eyebrows; washers to endlessly clean themselves or the articles around them.

A debate exists about certain quasi-compulsive behaviors, such as gambling, as to whether they are pleasurable addictions, or egodystonic compulsions, i.e., actions which the subject attempts to resist and finds alien to themselves.[6]

Otto Fenichel suggested that there was a transition between ego-alien compulsions and pleasurable impulses in the form of compulsive games or hobbies,[7] such as reading atlases, doing mathematics, or making up languages - the latter an area where (in Tolkien's words) "as you are master your whim is law, and you may...be for ever niggling, altering, refining, wavering, according to your linguistic mood".[8]

Adler, A. (1916). The antithesis above-beneath, Choice of a profession, Somnambulism, Antithesis in thought, Elevation of the personality through the disparagement of others, Jealousy, Neurotic auxiliaries, Authoritativeness, Thinking in antithesis and the masculine protest, Dilatory attitude and marriage, The tendency upward as a symbol of life, Compulsion to masturbation, The neurotic striving for knowledge. Adler, Alfred; Glueck, Bernard (Trans); Lind, John E (Trans). (1916). The neurotic constitution: Outlines of a comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy.

Adler, A. (1916). Fear of the partner; The ideal in the neurosis; Insomnia and compulsion to sleep; Neurotic comparison of man and woman; Forms of the fear of the wife. Adler, Alfred; Glueck, Bernard (Trans); Lind, John E (Trans). (1916). The neurotic constitution: Outlines of a comparative individualistic psychology and psychotherapy.

Buckler, R. B. (1996). Exploring the social environment of marketplace compulsiveness: The effects of presence of others on compulsive buying. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dimitropoulos, A. (2003). An investigation of childhood rituals and compulsive behavior in children with Prader-Willi syndrome. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering.

Geissbler, P. (1980). The failure to live up to a self-imposed set of values as a specific situation of conflict in migraine patients: Zeitschrift fur Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychoanalyse Vol 26(1) Jan-Mar 1980, 40-46.

Guidry, L. S. (1974). Treatment of a case of compulsive stealing by use of a covert aversive contingency and the Premack principle: Newsletter for Research in Mental Health & Behavioral Sciences Vol 16(2) May 1974, 27-28.

Joel, D., Doljansky, J., & Schiller, D. (2005). 'Compulsive' lever pressing in rats is enhanced following lesions to the orbital cortex, but not to the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala or to the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex: European Journal of Neuroscience Vol 21(8) Apr 2005, 2252-2262.

Watt, N. J. (2006). Repetitive and stereotyped behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorders in the second year of life. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering.